power!

Bonjour famille!

Oh my GOODNESS. I have so much to tell you. This week was long and tiring, but amazing! I'm still absolutely head-over-heels in love with being a missionary. It's the greatest thing ever!

Let's see, I'll start with telling you about Sunday. Church at the MTC is wonderful. We had Sacrament meeting with our little branch of French missionaries- there's about 60 of us. The entire meeting was in French, except for the leaders who spoke at the end. Every week, everyone has to prepare a talk in french on an assigned topic, and they call two missionaries up to give their talks at the beginning of sacrament meeting. Kind of scary! I didn't get called up this time, but we'll see about this sunday :) After sacrament meeting, the sisters all watch Music & The Spoken Word together. It was so nice to hear some music from the choir! (we're not allowed to listen to music at the MTC. lame.) Then we all had relief society together. You're right Katie, it's the most amazing Relief Society meeting ever! i can't wait to see who will come speak this time. Last week it was Sister Doxey of the Relief Society General Board. She was awesome. All of us sisters were crying, of course :)

On sunday nights we have a fireside. Elder Stephen Allen came, he's the Managing Director of the Missionary Department. He was hilarious, and he gave some great council. After the fireside, your district can pick from a list of movies to watch. (movies! we were so excited.) we chose the Joseph Smith movie, and oh gosh. I bawled like a baby through the ENTIRE thing. When it was over, I looked at the elders sitting next to me and they were wiping away tears, all 10 of them! It was so sweet.

On tuesday, we had a devotional with Richard G. Scott! It was a sweet surprise. We sang "Called to Serve" for the opening hymn- my first time singing that song in the MTC. It was so powerful singing those words with 2,000 other missionaries and an Apostle. Elder Scott didn't really sing, he just sat there looking at all of us and smiling. His talk was SO good. He talked about following the guidance of the spirit. Towards the end of his talk, he was telling a story abou two sister missionaries following the spirit to get out of a dangerous situation. He suddenly stopped and said he was going to invoke his Apostalic power in order to cast a protective shield over all the sisters in the room. I could tangibly feel that power settle down on me. He spoke a lot to the sisters, which was a surprise and a great blessing. We're very outnumbered here, so it was nice to receive blessings and guidance just for us! At the very end of his talk, he pronounced two more Apostalic blessings on the congregation: The Gift of Tongues (yay!) and the blessing of confidence and guidance of the spirit. He told us we are far more prepared than we think we are. It was such a great booster!

Speaking of general authorities, I was telling Soeur Larsen about the whole "Dieter" thing and about how we love his white teeth and fabulous ties. She said, "No way. Me and my roommates used to call him Elder Hunk-dorf." I knew right then and there our companionship is meant to be! It was so funny.

I'm still loving the MTC. We spend almost all day, every day in our little classroom as a district. we're already really close. 6 of us are going to Paris (Soeur Larsen included-- we're leaving the MTC on the same day! yay!) and the other 6 are going to Montreal. We're already sad about splitting up. The Elders are hysterical: yesterday Elder Andersen (the one from Norway) picked up a pinecone and, I kid you not, started to eat it. Nasty! When we asked him why on EARTH he was eating a pinecone, he looked totally unphased and said, "This is how Norwegians get their fiber." So we all asked Elder Hayden (from Austria) if he had ever eaten a pinecone and he replied, "I only like them with ketchup." Um, what?? Hah. We all have so much fun together. We have been working really hard as well. Some of the Elders had no French experience coming into the MTC and after only a week they are praying and bearing their testimonies in French! It's amazing. Soeur Larsen and I have been reading Doctrine et Allinances together and I can understand almost everything! We speak French to each other about 60% of the time.

My time is running out, so I will send a letter with more. By the way mom, today is our first temple trip! I can't wait!

I love all of you!
Please keep the letters coming, i look forward to receiving them every day! I can only write back on Fridays, so the responses are coming, I promise!

Until next week,

soeur williams